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Talk:My Hero/@comment-3575890-20140623124829
One last thing I say about Karen because I love this girl so much and I feel that in a cast of mortally corrupt characters - some far worse than Karen - she gets way too much flack. (I'm not referring to the opinions of anyone here btw; I'm talking about the Shameless fandom as a whole) As unpopular of an opinion as it is, I think Karen is a great character. She's complex, unpredictable, flawed, ambiguous, damaged, real. Taking into account her background and backstory, I find her to be completely believable as a human being. She is a reflection of her upbringing and environment. While yes, Sheila loves her daughter, back when Eddie was the head of the house (barf), it seemed to me that she allowed him to have all the power including the choices he made by their daughter, and that largely factored into Karen's personal and moral development. Karen is not heartless. She is broken. There is a difference. She is embittered by past and present experiences and I think anyone in her shoes would be just as fucked up. It's why we love Mickey, in spite of his monumental faults, isn't it? Because we understand the psychology behind the man. Why doesn't the Shameless fandom extend the same treatment of Karen? All of the characters are perceived through a psychoanalytical lens, as these characters should be, but when it comes to Karen, nobody bothers to scrape past the surface. Mickey can commit homicide, and he's simply misunderstood. But Karen? No, Karen is just a bitch and a slut and that's that. Now don't get me wrong here. I am in no way sanctifying Karen, just as I wouldn't any character on this show no matter how much I love them because none of them are a shining example or integrity. These characters are intricately flawed and that is their charm that makes them so fun to discuss and so easy to sympathize with and relate to. They are heartbreakingly human. Karen is no exception to that rule. As horrible as she may seem a lot of the time judging on the awful things she says and does -- particularly this season about her baby, there's a psychology behind all of it. This is a girl who was abandoned by her father. Whom was shamed and vilified by him in front of a roomful of strangers. Whom was basically told by him that she wasn't good enough and not worthy of his affections unless she moulded herself into his standards of the perfect daughter; in her desperation for his love and acceptance, she even tried for him, but he cast her aside. This was the turning point that began her plunge into wretchedness. By the time the news of her dad's death got back to her, Karen couldn't even be bothered to shed a single tear over her dad. She is permanently hardened, and with that comes bitterness and cruelty. She has grown to safeguard her emotions and refuses to let her walls down for anyone. She is both afraid to love and be loved, which is why she panics when Lip tells her he loves her and even ends up pushing the one person she thought she was in love with away. She shuns love, but not companionship, after realizing how it affects her and she no longer believes in its possibility for her. So once her baby is born, she shuns him in every way she can. She won't look at him, she won't touch him, hold him, name him, or even refer to him as anything but an "it". She feigns complete lack of caring what happens to him, but her pained expression and lack of a usual snarky response when a police officer informs her of what will happen to her baby says another story. Her refusal to be around the baby for fear of becoming attached conveys something else entirely. Her pained expression when her mother insists the baby stays instead of goes to a home where Karen won't have to see him or think about him says EVERYTHING. The way Karen acted as though she couldn't get rid of the baby fast enough reminded me so much of when Veronica acted as though she didn't care about Ethel after Ethel abandoned her, going so far as to disparage her, denounce ever having any feeling of caring toward the girl, and dehumanizing her as a tool for personal gain by implying she never meant anything more to her than a paycheck, but we know that was a load of bullshit. Veronica loved Ethel and she was just as hurt as Kev when Ethel left them. Now Karen acts as though she couldn't care less what happens to the baby, but it's not that she doesn't. It's that she doesn't WANT to. She doesn't want to care. She lays on the uncaring mother act and she lays it on thick because she knows if she allows herself to have any feeling towards the baby, it becomes real. But if she didn't care at all, she wouldn't be bothered by Sheila raising him. If this baby had zero impact over her, she wouldn't be phased by having to see the baby just as long as she didn't have to raise him herself. But it's no good. She can't deal with the baby being anywhere near her and that suggests anything but the feeling of cold indifference she's trying to convey. She wants the baby out of her life so she can go on pretending that he never existed. She wants to put the ordeal behind her and move on with her life, but that's not possible for her as long as the baby is constantly around her in the care of her mother, so she leaves. Because it's all she can do to move on. Karen can be one cold bitch. She can be outright vicious and mean, but many other characters on this show have that very same capacity. Mickey is fucking homicidal, Carl has a disturbed, sadistic mindset that signals potential to develop psychopathy, and Lip can be a spiteful, hurtful fucking douchebag to put it lightly. In fact, his shoddy treatment of Mandy is strikingly reminiscent of Karen's mistreatment of him, which sheds some light on some similarities between the two of them that many people refuse to acknowledge because they love Lip and don't want him to place him in the same camp as evil, awful Karen. The same goes for Mickey and Carl (and that's just a few examples) whom I would argue are more fucked up than Karen. What is it about Karen that people are so unwilling to apply the same level of critical thinking, analysis, and assessment as they do these other flawed characters? Oops, this turned into an essay.